Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-14, 00:17:
kjliew wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:41:
Jo22 wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:00:
For example, the USB-PS/2 emulation only worked at the BIOS level.
Once OSes, like Win98, took control over the USB controller, that PS/2 port emulation was gone.
You are indeed right about PS/2 emulation. Intel's ambition of past legacy-free PC wasn't doing so well with regard to PS/2 ports, compared to the rest such as LPT and COM ports. One of the excuses was legacy BIOS. With UEFI class 3, almost all the troubles with legacy BIOS were gone. There hasn't been any application for LPT ports nowadays and FTDI is quite successful in converting COM ports application with their family of FTDI USB-to-serial convertor chips for industrial equipment. UEFI class 3 also only boots Win8+, the concerns of booting into legacy OS no longer hold. UEFI is also exclusively 64-bit implementations for x86_64.
All the ingredients are well lined up now, for the final blow to rid x86 from its long entrenched legacy. It is just a matter of time and it will be on accelerated obsolesce path compared to the last 20 years.
Keeee? I'm sure industrial mobo and equipment manufactures will depute that 🤣.
I guess the industrial "scene" will do their own stuff then.. 😉
zyzzle wrote on 2021-06-14, 00:32:
Well, the flipside is that with FPGA, the oldschool DOS system will never die, as cloning such is entirely possible in that realm. In 10-20 years, speeds and costs of FPGA will be low enough to accomplish it at reasonable cost and speed, for that 30 / 60 fps DOS gaming experience without emulation's faults or problems.
Well, yes and no. The thing with programmable hardware like FPGA is.. It's programmable. xD
It surely is useful, practical and can mimic the conventional ciruits on the logic-level rather well, but..
It's just not the same thing anymore.
It's a technological changeling that can transform into everything needed.
Old school hackers like to work with older technology, not modern technology based on tens of millions of transistors.
That's like replacing a 90s era 640x480 LCD panel with a 2010s 1600x1200 panel that does pixel-doubling. Same effect, but different technological level.
That's the "problem" with FPGA as a replacement. It's a very complicated, very powerful technology.
It contains technology like FLASH that didn't exist in, say, 1976.
And that's taking away the fascination. It's like replacing a mechanical relay or a tube with a silicon diode.
For someone that loves to understand a piece of technology at the lowest-level and observe it's reactions,
an FPGA is not better than an emulator. In some ways, even worse. Because it's possible to look inside an emulator.
Edit: I didn't meant to sound rude. I share your optimism, too. 😀
Maybe it will be possible to "3d print" circuits in the future.
That way, maybe, replicas of older tehnology could be made.
kjliew wrote on 2021-06-14, 00:55:Well, that really comes down to one's personal choice then, not that DOSBox isn't capable of delivering similar experience. […]
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Well, that really comes down to one's personal choice then, not that DOSBox isn't capable of delivering similar experience.
You are right about the analogy of eBooks vs physical books, it is one's personal choice, nothing's wrong with that. The same applies to DOSBox, too, I can play the games anywhere, anytime, on Windows 10 desktop/laptop, on Linux and macOS just the same as eBooks are more easily accessible from mobile devices, Kindles and etc.
Another equation is cost of ownership. If eBook and physical book costs the same, then one has the freedom of choice. If eBook only costs 99 cents with instant digital delivery while physical book cost $25 + shipping, then the choice will be different. The same applies for DOSBox. If you had a spared machine capable of booting DOS, then just use it if you don't mind. If you don't and acquiring one would cost several hundreds $$$, then DOSBox will be the obvious choice.
DJGPP DOS ports are different beasts, but that beasts have been tamed with virtualization, including 3Dfx Glide pass-through for true 3D acceleration at any resolution with maximum quality. Because of true 3D acceleration, the bare-metal DOS does not offer the same rendering quality, even if it can achieve the same speed with VESA LFB write-combining.
Check it out 😁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi8YHBePaUA
All known DJGPP DOS ports work with virtualization at quality exceeds most real DOS machines, QDOS, Q2DOS, GLH2DOS and SM64 when one adopts the right technology.
Indeed. What also made me wonder is how much emulation is already going on in modern CPUs themselves..
I mean, does microcode count as a form of "emulation" if it performs the work of something than would normally have been done by dedicated hardware ?
I'm thinking of the 808x, for example, which has to perform memory arithmetics in its ALU to determine the resulting address of segment+offset.
If we say "yes", then all the Intel/AMD chips down to the 8080 or 8086 are not executing their instruction code by 100% "in hardware".
Which leaves the question whether or not the Zilog Z80 and the NEC V20/V30 are due to their hard-wired functions (?) actually more
"natively" working than their role models (th originals). 😉
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